Which has brighter future: Achieve Planner or MLO?

[dgorecki]

I'm in the process of selecting a task manager, and it's down to Achieve Planner and MLO (My Life Organized). One of the key considerations for me is integration with Outlook as I use a PPC (and sometimes a Blackberry).

At present, MLO has the better synchronization implementation, so it seems like the obvious choice.

My question is.... for those of you who have been following the development of these two products, which one seems to be developing at a faster pace?

So if AP is moving more rapidly, perhaps they would have full synching in short order?

The bottom line is that I'd like to back the product that will be continuously devloped, and has the brighter future regardless of where they are now.

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[TimeKing]

I'm in the process of selecting a task manager, and it's down to Achieve Planner and MLO (My Life Organized). One of the key considerations for me is integration with Outlook as I use a PPC (and sometimes a Blackberry).

At present, MLO has the better synchronization implementation, so it seems like the obvious choice.

My question is.... for those of you who have been following the development of these two products, which one seems to be developing at a faster pace?

So if AP is moving more rapidly, perhaps they would have full synching in short order?

The bottom line is that I'd like to back the product that will be continuously devloped, and has the brighter future regardless of where they are now.

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I have just gone through a lengthy process of trying out both AP and MLO.

While AP has some nice features lacking in MLO, and Roger the developer has done an excellent job in his progress with the program, I felt that it was just too slow for me to negotiate around in.

Some people may like the grid style that he uses with AP, but for me, the MLO interface is a lot more user friendly and its ease of use seems far superior to AP.

Bob Pankratz came over to MLO as a power-user from Life Balance and has added tremendously to the development and direction of LB. I feel the developer is much further ahead in his development of MLO than Rodger is with AP.

MLO almost has a beta PPC app that is pretty far along and the MLO Outlook sync is far superior to AP, at this point at least.

At the end of the day, having used FranklinCovey's PlanPlus for Outlook, Life Balance, Bonsai, Achieve Planner and MyLife Organized, I have decide to stick with MyLife Organized.

I am currently using a Treo 650 (Palm OS), but with the direction that Windows Mobile 5 is taking, with the Treo 700w and so many other devices now using it as their platform, I feel there is a really good forward path with MyLife Organized.

Good luck with your decision!

 

[dgorecki]

Thanks TimeKing.

Sounds like we've been down the same path! I was an old Palm user and used Bonsai almost exclusively. When I switched to PocketPC a few years ago, I was not exactly thrilled with what was out there to give me Natara's functionality.

I was going to test out Franklin's product, but heard that it was very hard to uninstall, and left a lot of garbage behind, so did not try it.

I've been trying Achieve Planner for a couple of days. Like you, I've found a lot of great features. However, it's quite slow.

As far as MLO PPC, I have been intrigued with it, but it sounds like the performance is not quite there yet.

I did not realize that one of the MLO developers is from LB. I know it's a top notch product, so things can only get better with MLO.

Looks like MLO may be the one for me. Maybe can you confirm, have you heard whether the Outlook to MLO synching will be enhanced in the future, or dropped? I've read some forum posts that suggest that since MLO is not an Outlook add-in, that the synch feature was only there to "migrate" users from MLO, and was not meant to be a robust two-way synch. Not sure if that's accurate or not.

Thanks again for your input!

Cheers!

 

[TimeKing]

Thanks TimeKing.

Sounds like we've been down the same path! I was an old Palm user and used Bonsai almost exclusively. When I switched to PocketPC a few years ago, I was not exactly thrilled with what was out there to give me Natara's functionality.

I was going to test out Franklin's product, but heard that it was very hard to uninstall, and left a lot of garbage behind, so did not try it.

I've been trying Achieve Planner for a couple of days. Like you, I've found a lot of great features. However, it's quite slow.

As far as MLO PPC, I have been intrigued with it, but it sounds like the performance is not quite there yet.

I did not realize that one of the MLO developers is from LB. I know it's a top notch product, so things can only get better with MLO.

Looks like MLO may be the one for me. Maybe can you confirm, have you heard whether the Outlook to MLO synching will be enhanced in the future, or dropped? I've read some forum posts that suggest that since MLO is not an Outlook add-in, that the synch feature was only there to "migrate" users from MLO, and was not meant to be a robust two-way synch. Not sure if that's accurate or not.

Thanks again for your input!

Cheers!

You are right, FranklinCovey's PlanPlus product has some very major serious flaws. It is a pity, as there are a lot of very good features in it for those who adhere to the FranklinCovey school of thought on time management. It's bad enough that the program has so many bugs in it. However, they add insult to injury with such a terribly deficient uninstall routine. It's terrible!

Achieve Planner DOES have some great features, and I really WANTED to like it. However, at the end of the day -- actually after a week of using it everyday -- I just found it too difficult to navigate around in. The developer, Rodger Constande, seems to like keyboard shortcuts, which is okay; however, as a long-time Windows user, I like using intuitive menus/icons wherever possible. I found MLO to be much more user friendly.

As far as MLO's PPC app, I cannot really comment, as am still using a Treo 650 (Palm OS) device. However, I can see moving over to that platform in the near future and I am very confident that by the time I do the developer, Andrey Tkachuk, and his team will have a very fast, functional and robust app for PPCs. I don't know what the actual time frame for the beta version going full production, but my guess is that it will be fairly soon ( a few months at the latest). You can find out more about both at their Google forums (MyLifeOrganized and myLifeOrganized-ppc).

Also, to clarify, the gentlemen I referred to (Bob Pankratz) is NOT on the MLO development team "per se". To the best of my knowledge, having frequented the LifeBalance forums while I was an LB user, Bob was a LifeBalance power user who spent an enormous amount of time trying to help the LB community (and developers) with suggestions and, most importantly, some very excellent templates for GTD implementation.

At some point, I believe, he must have gotten frustrated with LB's lack of responsiveness to their user base, especially those, like Bob, who were looking for a PPC app (LB only had Windows, Palm and Mac apps). So, when MLO arrived on the scene, and once Bob felt sure enough that its developer was committed to adding needed functionality not in LB, as well as a commitment to a PPC app, Bob jumped ship from LB over to MLO and has been one of the key power users, beta testers and proponents for MLO. He's really incredible.

I think you are absolutely wrong regarding the MLO Outlook synch. My experience is that it is top notch. They have built about every type of option into it that's possible. They have made it so people like me, who are not on the PPC platform yet, but still using a Palm PDA, can easily sync up with their Palm devices through Outlook. I actually use Chapura's KeySuite on my Treo 650 as a replacement for the standard Palm apps, and to better mirror what I have in Outlook. It works great! With MLO's robust sync capabilities, I am able to port virtually everything over to my Treo 650 from MLO.

To rate LB, AP and MLO in terms of their developer's responsiveness to their users and speed of development (with 0 being terrible and 10 being the best), I would rate LB a 3, AP a 7.5, and MLO a 9.5.

Hope that helps and, again, good luck! If you start using MLO regularly for GTD, please share your experiences here or at the MLO forums on Google groups. Thanks!